Adam Baker - Impact

‘I’m on it, boss.’

‘Navigation should be easy enough. We’ll head for Capricorn. Adjust our heading five degrees an hour to compensate for natural deviation. That should keep us on the right heading.’

‘Okay.’

‘I’ll remove the core element from the missile. The warhead itself weighs less than a hundred pounds. We’ll strap it to the sled, take turns to pull.’

Frost looked like she wanted to argue but Noble threw a glance, a barely perceptible shake of the head. Just let the guy talk.

Hancock got to his feet, stumbled and gripped the wall.

‘I’ll need your help down in the bomb bay, lieutenant.’

‘Be with you directly, sir.’

Frost stepped outside.

Daylight curdled red. The low sun cast long shadows. Her silhouette stretched across the sand.

She tied the sleeves of her flight suit round her waist and tucked the Beretta into the waistband.

She lifted the nuclear authorisation lanyard from around her neck. She snapped the plastic tab, extracted the code slip, and hurled the spent lanyard as far as she could.

She unfolded laminate paper. The authorisation sequence. Ten digits that would arm the nuclear device, transform a canister of rare metals into a new sun.

She held the slip in her hand, felt the power that resided within the row of inked symbols.

She flicked open her Zippo and wafted the flame beneath the paper. The slip browned and caught alight. Text blackened and shrivelled. She let the paper burn down to her fingers, dropped the stub and kicked it beneath the sand.

Noble emerged from the plane. He bent and double-tied his boots. Then he stood and shouldered the backpack.

‘Guess it’s time to leave,’ he said.

They embraced. They stood back and looked at each other.

‘ Via con Dios , brother,’ said Frost. ‘Don’t forget about us, all right? Once you reach the world, come get us, you hear?’

He nodded, smiled, adjusted straps.

‘Back before you know.’

He set out, big strides, crested a high dune. He glanced back, parting wave, then dropped out of sight.

Frost stood alone and contemplated his footprints in the sand.

Moonrise. Dunes lit ice-white.

Residual day heat quickly radiated into a cloudless sky. Skin chill. Each exhalation fogged the air. Noble zipped his flight suit to the neck.

He was awash with adrenalin, tempted to break into a run, try to cover as much ground as he could before morning.

‘Calm the hell down,’ he told himself. ‘You’re a rational man, a trained professional. You got a solid plan. Stick to it.’

Machine mode. Steady respiration. Breathe from the diaphragm. Inhale: three paces. Exhale: three paces. He zoned out and let his body eat miles.

He knew better than to sing or hum. If he summoned a tune it could easily turn into a tormenting earworm he couldn’t shake no matter how hard he tried. An endurance lesson learned during Basic. Pre-dawn reveille. Hauling himself across an assault course in cold morning light. High wall, water trench, belly-crawl under wire. The unmastered mind will break and fail long before physical collapse.

He wanted to pause and tighten the straps of his backpack but knew if he stopped for any reason, sat a while to sip from his canteen or relace his boots, he might be crippled by lactic acid. His limbs would seize, leaving him unable to walk another step.

He monitored the rotation of the constellations. Figured he’d been walking four, five hours. The wrecked B-52 lay far behind.

He strode the first mile fast as he could, in case Hancock put up a star shell and tried to chase him down. Didn’t know the guy well enough to predict how Hancock would react once he discovered he’d split. He might regard him as a mutineer and, in his fury, climb a high dune and lose a few shots from his Beretta. A mile would put him out of reach.

He tried hard not to think of the vast aridity around him. An implacably hostile landscape. Three-sixty desolation.

Absolute silence.

Absolute stillness.

A barren sea of silica.

The death-dry plains of an alien world.

Mixture of terror and exhilaration. Marooned, yet absolute master of his fate.

He looked up at the sky. Wheeling constellations. Scorpio, Cassiopeia, Draco.

He was heading north-east towards Dry Bone Canyon. He looked up, used the handle of the Big Dipper to confirm the position of the North Star. It would be visible most of the night, shifting position approximately fifteen degrees each hour. He would take precise compass readings every three hours.

He tried to imagine what lay over the horizon ahead of him. A way to fill monotonous hours.

The reconnaissance photograph showed SUVs and a couple of house trailers. Perhaps it marked the establishment of a permanent military site. An advance team staking out the ground-plan of a secure compound to be built far from urban pandemonium.

He pictured crew cabins, generators, sealed food, jerry cans of water.

He might find fresh underwear. He might find toiletries on a bathroom shelf, a chance to freshen up and shave, foam the dust from his hair, wipe the fried-onion stink from his armpits.

Most of all, he wanted to find a vehicle with a full tank of gas and keys in the ignition. Big, black government SUV with tinted windows. A sweet journey back to Liberty Bell : blast the air con, crank the music, relish soft leather seats.

He tried to recall a Discovery Channel doc he once saw about the Paris/Dakar. Bunch of rich guys bouncing dunes in a tricked out Mitsubishi Pajero. A half-remembered tip for driving through desert: bleed air from your tyres. Wider they spread, less likely the vehicle will bed down.

Absurd wish? A fuelled automobile waiting for him to climb inside and turn the key to IGN? What the hell. About time they caught a break.

He kept walking.

Easy to picture old-time settlers crossing the dunes, trying to make is west. Near-dead horses hauling covered wagons merciless miles. Gaunt, hollow-eyed men and women, reins in their hands, praying for the landscape to change, anxious for any hint of vegetation.

They might be beneath his feet right now. Consumed by the landscape. Submerged cartwheels and planks. Horse skulls and tackle. Coffee pots and griddles. Boots, bonnets and bone.

His canteen hung from a lanyard slung from his shoulder. He uncapped and took a single swig, rolled the water round his mouth, sluiced cheek-to-cheek, finally swallowed. He licked the neck of the canteen in case a droplet of moisture hung from the screw thread, then recapped.

Eyes fixed on the starlight horizon. Part of him prayed for daybreak and rest. But it would be tough to sleep during the day. Heat would put him in a delirium. Physical exhaustion replaced by mental torment.

He began to fear the wilderness went on for ever. Boundless dunes, like he was lost within some kind of simulation. A game environment. A world built from code. Each time he crested a ridge a new section of virtual terrain, a wire-frame scaffold overlaid with plates of sand texture, would snap into being. The landscape would curl on itself like a Möbius strip. Walk long enough and he’d find himself back at the plane, back where he began.

He shook his head, tried to arrest his free-spinning imagination and return to the present.

How long had he been walking? A long while. Didn’t necessarily mean he’d covered much ground. Wading through soft sand. Laboriously hauling himself to the top of each dune. His calves and ankles burned.